Tom Perez Quotes

The current minimum wage simply is not supporting Ohio's working families.

House Republican leadership have refused to allow a clean minimum wage vote. Close to 15 million Americans will be affected if we did this. Do Republicans really expect a family to live on less than $11,000 a year?

Does anyone really believe it is possible to make even the most basic ends meet on $5.15 an hour?

The sad fact is that in communities such as mine, the minimum wage is the maximum wage.

Wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage earner.

Too many jobs don't pay enough to get by, let alone get ahead.

America's vast population of working poor can only get so poor before even Walmart is out of reach.

Americans shouldn't have to hold down two or three jobs to make ends meet.

I grew up in a family where my parents worked full-time and still found themselves and their six children trapped like so many of the working poor.

When I got to Toronto, I got a job at the car wash for 90 cents an hour but you got paid everyday so I always had a few dollars.

If you think about $7.25 an hour, that's $290 a week. It's inhumane to have that kind of wage.

Many blue-collar families struggling to pay rent would be happy to skip paying optional union dues.

How can anyone live off of minimum wage?

Thirteen thousand dollars a year is not enough to raise a family. That's not enough to pay your bills and save for their future. That's barely enough to provide for even the most basic needs.

No family gets rich from earning the minimum wage. In fact, the current minimum wage does not even lift a family out of poverty.

Today a minimum wage earner has to work a day and a half just to pay for a full tank of gas. That is simply shameful.

In New Orleans, where I'm from, the average household income, with two working parents, two kids, a dog and a little fence is $16,000 a year, so $15,000 for a movie sounds pretty good.

In reality, most of America's poor work hard, often in two or more jobs.

No woman who works full time and plays by the rules should have to raise her family in poverty.

In West Virginia, the most vulnerable people we have are people who get up every morning and go to work.

You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.

It is unacceptable that someone can work full time - and work hard - and not be able to lift themselves out of poverty.

The bottom line is that five million low-income Americans working full time for minimum wage, deserve a raise.

Emotional appeals about working families trying to get by on $4.25 an hour are hard to resist. Fortunately, such families do not exist.

It's wrong that so many hardworking people - people working full-time, or even multiple jobs - need public assistance just to survive.